


Beyond Memory

by potofsoup (orphan_account)



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-16
Updated: 2014-07-16
Packaged: 2018-02-09 03:46:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1967760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/potofsoup
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"What am I supposed to do, Sam?"  Steve asked on their morning run the next day.  He hadn't slept much the night before, but the familiar feeling of pounding pavement around the National Mall was comforting and restorative.  Last night still felt like a sick joke, but at least now, with his shirt whipping against him and Sam at his side, he felt ready to talk.  "I wanted Bucky back so badly, and now..."</p><p>"You got a zombie Winter Soldier who doesn't remember he's Bucky?"  Sam tried, half-heartedly, to pass it off as a joke, but he clearly hadn't slept much either. </p><p>-----<br/>Bucky remembers Steve, but that doesn't exactly help since he can't remember himself.  Good thing Sam, Nat, and Clint are around to help.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Beyond Memory

When Sam showed up at the door he was out of breath, "I'm sorry... should have waited 'till morning... couldn't quite tell on the phone ... did you find Bucky or not?"

Steve just stepped aside and let him see the man sitting placidly at the kitchen table. "He was here when I got home."

Sam walked up and cautiously sized up the Winter Soldier -- dressed in a stolen hoodie and t-shirt, hair tied up in an awkward ponytail and a sporting a ratty beard, he didn't look like the same man who'd almost killed everyone 6 months ago. "So *this* is why you've been taking on all those crazy missions and ignoring us? Because this guy only shows up when you're in danger?" The Winter Soldier looked at Sam, and he felt a chill. Same blank eyes, though. They both turned to Steve.

"Yes. It started with Philadelphia, the time with the robots." Steve seemed surprisingly calm for someone whose long-lost and brainwashed best friend just showed up in his kitchen. "He's been getting me out of dangerous missions ever since. I haven't been able to track him down, until tonight." Steve paused, then said drily, "He's here to report that he hasn't been able to find Bucky."

Sam's been in some strange situations, especially after meeting Steve, but this was just too absurd. He found himself blurting out, "Shit, that's messed up, man," and idly wondering if there was anything in his VA counselor training that would have been a better thing to say.

Steve briefly looked like he wanted to laugh and cry at the same time, but he bit his lip and said in a calm, professional tone, "I've verified that he's not a threat. I'll take him in to Fury for a full debrief, but he seems to think his new mission is keeping me safe." 

That line of questioning must have been hard, and Sam was secretly glad he didn't have to be here for it. He idly wondered how long it took for Steve to compose himself before calling Sam. He sat down next to the Winter Soldier, hand still hovering on his hip holster. "Yeah? But what about me? What if I accidentally poison you with a breakfast burrito or something?"

As if on cue, Winter Soldier suddenly turned his head, looked at Sam and spoke in a perfect Brooklyn accent, "Sam Wilson, codename The Falcon. Currently carrying two collapsible Steyr SPPs at each hip. Goes on morning runs with Steve Rogers, from 6am to 6:30am, occasional breakfasts, especially on Mondays and Wednesdays. Not a threat to Steve Rogers. Friendship classification: 16. Not Bucky."

"Shit." Sam was spooked. "Holy shit, has he been stalking us the past few months?" He stood up and started pacing around the small kitchen, muttered under his breath about friendship classifications, then finally turning around to address the Winter Soldier: "No shit Sherlock, Of course I'm not Bucky."

"I'm not Sherlock."

"Dammit!" Sam couldn't help himself. He slammed his hands down on the table and yelled in the Winter Soldier's face, "YOU ARE BUCKY! JAMES BUCHANAN BARNES! CAP'S WEIRD CREEPY PAL!!"

"I don't understand your statement. I am the asset. Codename: Winter Soldier. Mission: protect Steve Rogers." The Winter Soldier answered dispassionately. Somehow that was enough to make Sam take a step back. "What?"

"Codename: Winter Soldier. Mission: protect Steve Rogers." The Winter Soldier repeated.

Steve spoke up quietly from the couch where he'd been sitting. "He says that when he doesn't know what we want from him. Used to be 'James Buchanan Barnes, Sergeant, 35-276-909' but I guess at 95 he's losing his memory." Steve tried to make it into a joke but it came out hollow and haunted. Sam found himself thinking about what it took to turn one mantra into another.

Steve doesn't even bother to fake a yawn as he turns to his bedroom door. "I'm going to go to bed and figure it out in the morning. He's agreed to stay the night. There's extra blankets in the closet if you want to crash here tonight. If not, I'll see you in six hours."

Then the bedroom door closed and Sam is left staring at the Winter Soldier. "Yeah, what was it? 6am to 6:30am morning run?" Sam briefly weighed the likelihood of getting stabbed in the dark by the Winter Soldier against the unease he felt about leaving Steve alone with this guy, and decided that since he wasn't going to be sleeping anyway, he might as well stay the night. "Dibs on the couch." 

Just as Sam was wondering if the Winter Soldier even knew what "dibs" meant, he stood up and silently walked past the couch to settle down outside Steve's bedroom door.

\-------

"What am I supposed to do, Sam?" Steve asked on their morning run the next day. He hadn't slept much the night before, but the familiar feeling of pounding pavement around the National Mall was comforting and restorative. Last night still felt like a sick joke, but at least now, with his shirt whipping against him and Sam at his side, he felt ready to talk. "I wanted Bucky back so badly, and now..."

"You got a zombie Winter Soldier who doesn't remember he's Bucky?" Sam tried, half-heartedly, to pass it off as a joke, but he clearly hadn't slept much either. All Steve could do was keep pace and say, "A zombie, huh?"

"Well, minus the rotting flesh and eating brains part. So not really a zombie..."

Clint had shown Steve one of the new zombie movies, but what Steve found himself thinking about was the zombie movie that he saw with Bucky. They were 14, Bucky was tall enough to pose as an adult, and distracted the ticket vendor while Steve snuck in with the food. They sat in the back and Bucky laughed about the horrible costume choices. But the analogy of the lover who gets transformed into a zombie and ordered to kill her fiancé seems appropriate. She regained her memories after they killed the voodoo mastermind, but there's no longer any voodoo mastermind to kill in this case: Zola and Pierce are gone, and all they are left with is a zombie with no memory of himself. 

Steve decided to run faster. Lean into the wind. "On your left," he said to Sam as he lapped him.

\-------

"Look, I'm telling ya, there *must* be some part of him that's still Bucky, right?" They're sitting at Sam's place for breakfast after the run, and the familiarity of the ritual makes it almost seem like a normal day for Steve, and not one where he had a man calmly waiting at his kitchen table to be taken in for an afternoon debriefing. It's been disconcerting how compliant the Winter Soldier has been. He seemed to be content to follow Steve's requests as long has he was assured that Steve was safe. This was not the Bucky that Steve remembered.

"So tell me about him. Bucky. Was he a stalker back then, too? Am I gonna have ask Fury to file a restraining order?" Both of them knew what Sam was trying to ask: Should this man be left alone in Steve's apartment? Steve wasn't sure of the answer.  
"Well, Bucky definitely looked after me, but it's not the same. He's ... more protective, somehow. Bucky'd let me fight my own fights, but him... Did you know, the last mission, he decided to kill everyone before I got there?" Steve swallowed hard at the memory of walking through the eerily quiet complex, stepping over bodies that were very efficiently killed. It was his first hint that the man who was protecting him might not be Bucky after all. "He'd gotten hurt, but he didn't even bother to bandage himself...."

"Wait, you're telling me he killed an entire HYDRA base of people so you wouldn't have to?" Sam whistled. "Fury'd LOVE that."

"No!" Steve tensed at the thought of Bucky being used to fight Fury's battles. But then again, maybe the Winter Soldier would like that. "I mean, yes, but..." It felt wrong, but Steve couldn't quite justify why. Instead, he just said resolutely, "He's still Bucky in there somewhere. I just need to help him remember somehow." Having Bucky back felt like a call getting answered, a hand reaching out into the darkness everyday and finally getting clasped. But Steve wasn't sure how to explain it to Sam. "After I lost Bucky... everything felt weird. I'd turn to tell a joke and he..."

"I know." Sam's voice grew soft and serious, and Steve remembered Riley. "Everything feels wrong because you're so used to having that person there. And then you get home from the front and it's even worse. All you can do is hold on to something that was the same -- an old belief, an old habit, an old constant of some sort... Just to make the world feel sane again."

Sam shook his head, and when he looked up he was back to normal. "I mean, it's not the same, he's been a stone cold assassin and doesn't remember anything, plus no one knows what he's experienced in all these years -- some crazy Soviet lingo, waaay more weapons knowledge, both Soviet and American, and that creepy murder strut..." 

"It's not a creepy murder strut," Steve laughed, a real laugh. "He walks like me."

Sam quirked an eyebrow, "Bullshit. You don't walk all weird like that. Like a chicken."

"I did. I had scoliosis, you know. I had to choose between between walking at a normal pace or walking like a normal person." Steve shrugged. "He probably started walking like that because we went everywhere together -- the comic book store, the soup lines, the movie theater... We even visited my mom together, even though that walk took half the day...."

Steve thought back to the day walking home from the cemetery to find Bucky lounging by the apartment, pretending that he hadn't been waiting there for two hours just to walk you up the stairs. Steve didn't quite remember the jibes that he was making at Steve's expense -- something about shining his shoes -- but Steve did remember how good it felt to have Bucky be there for him on a day when he just wanted to curl up in a corner and stop. The feeling of Bucky walking up the stairs behind him and knowing that there was at least one constant remaining in his life.

"I need to be his constant." Steve said, abruptly. "Even if his mind doesn't remember, his body remembers." Steve stood up. "Old habits, right?" He smiled, resolute. "I'm going to ask Fury for some time off. I'm taking Bucky to New York." 

\-----------------------------  
"Nice of you to return to active duty, Captain America," said Fury as you came into the briefing room. "I hope your month of leave was well spent."

Steve could tell everyone in the room -- Clint, Natasha, Fury -- was silently evaluating you and the man who stood silently behind him and slightly to the right. The mission briefing on the first day back was patently an excuse to evaluate the Winter Soldier. Steve had worked hard this last month and was eager to show everyone the old Bucky. "Very well spent, sir." Steve put on his best Captain America face. "Sir, may I introduce..."

"Codename: Winter Soldier. Mission: protect Steve," came Bucky's voice. Fury was unreadable behind his shades, but Natasha raised her eyebrows, and Clint looked uncomfortable.

"Bucky!" Steve sputtered and looked at him, aghast. "Don't joke around like that!" 

"Sorry, Steve." Bucky smirked. "I'll make it up to you later, punk." He gave Steve a quick jab in the arm, but was completely expressionless when he turned back to face the others in the room. 

"Crap, what'd you do, Captain?" Natasha was too polite, so of course it was Clint who spoke up. "He just turns it on and off like that?"

"I..." Steve had to admit that he didn't expect this. He made sure to dress like the old days, shirts worn and baggy to mimic his old physique, pants barely held up with suspenders. He made sure to walk like he did before the serum -- it took a bit of effort to summon that awkward gait, and it gave him phantom pain in his lower back, but it was worth it -- Bucky started laughing and making jokes. He'd taken Bucky on long walks around Brooklyn, rode the Cyclone at Coney Island, and even found a few old movie theaters to go to. Bucky's old smirk returned. Bucky's old jokes returned. Steve rented an old apartment and boiled lots of potatoes and cabbage. He sat by the windowsill and sketched while telling Bucky stories of old escapades. Bucky started keeping a sketchbook and pencil in his pocket and taking it out when Steve ran out of paper. He even started answering to Bucky and playing little pranks on Steve.  
"He's Bucky when he's with me." Steve felt hollow, all of his energy and drive of the last month drained away. His mouth opened but no sound came out.

Natasha shot Steve a quick glance and then turned to Bucky. Smiling and gentle, she asked, "So, Steve calls you Bucky. Your codename is Winter Soldier. How would you like us to refer to you?"

A pause. "The asset is most commonly used. Winter Soldier is also acceptable."

Natasha managed to keep her face blank as she nodded in acknowledgement, but Clint rubbed his forehead and stared hard at the Winter Soldier. "Sir, if he can't remember..."

Fury cleared his throat. "I've already determined that he is not a threat as long as we are on the same team as Steve. Right now the mission in Istanbul takes precedence. Captain?" Natasha's intervention was enough time for Steve to compose himself. Sitting down at the briefing table, he is once again Captain America. He launched into the tactical plan that he had prepared, and was soon it felt like he was back with the Howling Commandos. Steve turned to the man behind him and and asked absent-mindedly, "What do you think, Bucky?"

He looked at Steve, cracked a grin and said in perfect Brooklyn drawl, "I'll go wherever you go, Steve. You know that."

\---------  
"What am I supposed to do, Nat?" Steve asked Natasha as they picked their way into the Byzantine ruins under the heart of Istanbul. Clint was going in from the back, and Bucky's was far behind them perched on a column with a sniper rifle, keeping a watchful eye on Steve. The layout of the subterranean complex didn't provide any good sniper vantage points, for which Steve is thankful. "I thought I'd gotten Bucky back, but now..."

"He's like a Stepford Wife?" She paused, ducked a punch and took down a HYDRA agent. "That means...."

"I know, behaving perfectly but no spirit whatsoever." Natasha disappeared around a column while Steve took care of an attempted ambush. Steve had been slowly working his way through "must watch" film lists. Steve frowns at the analogy. After all, he didn't secretly turn Bucky into a robot just to keep Bucky in line -- that's what HYDRA did. Steve didn't conspire to fashion the perfect spouse who responds to his every whim. In fact, he's been trying all month to bring back a less compliant Bucky, and he thought he'd succeeded...

"Maybe you're trying too hard, gramps." Natasha said cryptically as she re-emerged from the left, and they fought back-to-back, making their way to the control room.

"What am I supposed to do? Just let him ... soldier on?" Steve carefully took aim with his shield and let it fly, taking out the remaining 5 HYDRA agents.

Natasha turned to futz with the computer console. "What's wrong with being a soldier?"

"Because that's not Bucky. Bucky never wanted to go to war. He was always going on about ..."

"Please don't confuse the Bucky you remember with the actual Bucky." Natasha's voice turned ice cold. "It's hard enough remembering who you are without having someone else insist they know better than you." 

Steve opened his mouth to protest but instead an ugly sound came out. "You're right." He'd labored to recreate the feeling of Bucky walking by his side, the feeling of Bucky pulling him into a headlock and making remarks about his stupidity. Looking back now, the result was as predictable as it was laughable: an automaton who reflects your desires but having nothing of himself. Steve had sought to be Bucky's one constant, but made Bucky a pale recording of Steve's memories. Steve wanted to hide in a corner and just stop.

"Your 8-o-clock!" Natasha's bark cut through Steve's thoughts just in time for him to pivot, crouch, and pull up the shield in a protective position around the two of them. The console nearby explodes, with Steve absorbing most of the shock. Natasha leapt free, rolled, then fired several shots at a man hiding behind a door. "Done," she said just as Steve leapt up to scan the rest of the room. 

Certain there are no other agents lurking about, Steve walked over to where Natasha crouched, examining the remains of the rather persistent HYDRA agent. He was a short squat man in a plain uniform that's sufficiently ill-fitting to be thrown on last minute as a disguise. "Thanks," said Steve. "Good eye."

"Old habit." She shrugged. "Saved my life more than once." Natasha examined his shoes. "But when I first came to SHIELD, I'd forget to warn people when I saw something." She peeled back the right sole and extracts a small black chip. "Too used to working alone. Had to teach myself new habits."

"Is that when you started asking people about their love lives?"

Natasha shrugged. "Easy way to remember to care." Getting up, she handed Steve the chip. light flickered on it in a strange way. "HYDRA data?" She nodded, and Steve wondered how long it took before she developed the habit of trusting her teammates. 

"Was it hard? The new habits?"

Natasha looked up at Bucky, who was approaching from a side door. "Not any harder than anything else I really wanted to do." 

Steve remembered how hard it was to find a reason to care about the new world that he'd woken up in. Everything he'd known and loved was dead or in the past. Even Peggy had already lived her own life. It wasn't until Natasha and Sam and, ironically, HYDRA, that Steve'd found a reason to care about the future. What Bucky needed wasn't a facsimile of the past, but a reason to want this world. He smiled. Bucky did always like the future.

"Thanks, Natasha." She rolled her eyes. "I mean it." She gave him a genuine smile as she headed off to find Clint. 

"Steve, are you hurt? I shouldn't have let you get that far ahead." Bucky's voice, worried as he materialized behind Steve. Satisfied that Steve is unhurt, Bucky settled into his usual position following him, behind and slightly to the right. There was blood running down his metal arm.

"Bucky! What happened? I thought I told you to stay back by the entryway!" Bucky shrugged. "Someone tried to ambush you while you and Agent Romanov were occupied."  
Steve sighed, the old Bucky would have trusted him. At least now he had a new plan. Steve reached out and pulled Bucky into a headlock. "You idiot, I can take care of myself." His confused grimace was so thoroughly Bucky-like that Steve laughed. "Let's get something to eat. Have you tried Turkish food?"

\----------------------------

After Istanbul Steve stopped pretending to be 16 and weak, and started wearing the t-shirts and jackets that he preferred. Steve started a new cooking ritual: they'd try out a new recipe every night from the many cookbooks that Steve ordered off the internet. Bucky especially enjoyed doing the chopping. On Friday nights after cooking a dinner at home, they'd go out for a movie with Sam, Natasha, and Clint, at one of those multiplexes with 20 screens. Clint and Sam always argued about which movie to watch, and Natasha always managed to sneak fruit into the theater. With his permission, everyone but Steve starts calling him Winter, and sometimes even Steve found himself using Winter and Bucky interchangeably. Winter started laughing with the others.

One night, a month since Istanbul and two weeks since London, Clint had the brilliant idea of going to Laser Tag after a rather awful action movie that had Bucky laughing and pointing out all the ways the villain *should* have killed the hero. Clint knew a place nearby, so soon everyone found themselves sitting in a grimy entryway strapping on a ratty vest and listening to Clint's attempts to explain the concept of Laser Tag to Winter.

"So the goal is to shoot people on the opposite team."

A quick nod. "Acknowledged." Then, Winter peered curiously at his gun. "I don't recognize this. Where do you load the clip?"

"No, Winter. It shoots lasers." Clint showed Bucky the trigger. "Shoot at the discs on the vest to score points."

"But there are many other kill zones."

"Jeez, Winter! We're not killing each other." Clint rolled his eyes, but he looked pretty deadly as he strapped on his custom-made lasertag bow and arrows. Unlike the plastic guns that the rest of you had, these were exact replicas of his normal set.

"Then what is the purpose of this mission?"

"To have fun!" Clint threw his hands up in the air. Then, aghast, "Wait, are you saying you were, 10 seconds ago, ready to actually kill me? Crap, Winter."

Winter cocked his head. "My mission is to protect Steve. You are friends of Steve, so I'd prefer not to. Are you not on Steve's team?"

Clint shook his head. "Nah, it's no fun going against normal people. Me, Sam and Nat on one team, you and Steve on the other team. ONLY SHOOT the LASER GUN at the DISCS." Clint looked a bit manic as he grabbed Bucky. "You don't have to protect Steve, because he won't be in any real danger. Please don't go crazy assassin in there and kill all of us with the 14 knives you have on you." The buzzer sounded, a pile of kids came out. "Great, let's go! You'll have fun, Winter. I PROMISE."

And it was fun, not just for Winter. Once inside, Winter of course melted into the shadows, but since he wasn't worried about Steve being in actual danger, Steve was also not hovering near Bucky. They settled into the easy partnership that they had in forests of Germany again. The round was over too quickly, and as everyone stumbled out, Sam muttering "last time anyone gives Captain America a gun," Winter edged over to Clint and said, quietly, "You were right. Thank you."

"Laser Tag arrows? Really?" Maria was waiting outside in a black van. Then came the real mission. Then came Lagos. Maybe everyone were high off of the Laser Tag, but something was different about Lagos. Steve dove into the fray and forgot to worry about Bucky until it was almost too late.

\---------

"What was I supposed to do, Buck?" Steve asked as Bucky chopped carrots for a new Thai recipe that Steve wanted to try. "You need to look after yourself. Yesterday you almost..."

"I was keeping you safe, Steve." Bucky's right arm was in a sling, yet he continued, undaunted. "I failed."

Steve made a generalized gesture with his shoulder as he lay on the high tech hospital bed. "Well, I'm still alive." He laughed even though both his arms are in splints and laughing tore at the broken ribs. Steve was different tonight, probably as a result of Tony's healing concoction, which sped up recovery by causing more pain. Or it might have been the fact that Steve came this close to losing Bucky again, if he hadn't gotten there in time by throwing himself down 10 stories into gunfire. "If you wanted to keep me safe, you should keep an eye on *yourself*. I wouldn't have had to do that dumb move if you weren't too busy taking out my guys to get out of the way of those bullets."

Bucky shrugged and moved onto water chestnuts. "You're right. That was a dumb move. I can't protect you if you do dumb things like that." Every part of Steve hurt so badly, it's like he was once again 11 and getting beat up in the schoolyard, 16 and getting beat up in the alley, or 20 and getting beat up outside the factory. So the feeling of righteous anger that welled up in Steve felt familiar, too. 

"I don't need your constant protection, Bucky. We look after each other. That's how it's always been, Bucky."

The chopping paused. "I'm not that Bucky. You know that, Steve."

Steve gave him an angry glare. "So who are you? Winter? The asset? The idiot who snuck out of Avengers Tower to buy curry ingredients?" Steve looked around the room. "How did you manage to assemble a whole portable kitchen, anyways?"

"I asked JARVIS. He is easy to talk to." Bucky started washing the basil and the kaffir lime leaves.

"Why are you doing this, Buck? You probably ripped half of your stitches doing this. I'm sure Tony already has food. JARVIS could have ordered us something."

Bucky put down the knife and looked at you, serious. "We had plans for Thai food tonight. You said I might like it."

"But we're both hurt, we should really..." Steve eyed a splotch of blood on Bucky's arm sling and wondered if it was there earlier.

"I want to do this, Steve. I... like the new things that we've been doing." Bucky looks away and starts stir-frying everything together, mixing the ingredients directly with his left hand.

"A part of me remembers you -- I do and say certain things and it feels right, not empty. If that part is what you mean by Bucky -- the Bucky that you grew up with, the one that you keep telling me about -- then I think I found him." 

"Bucky..." Steve tried to get up, arm splints be damned, but was quelled by the glare that Bucky shot him over the wok. "But I'm not him. And you're not the Steve my body remembers, either. You're too tall. You walk different. You breathe different." 

Bucky looked at his arm sling. "These memories that my body has-- they lie. They want me to protect you no matter what. They say I should always walk behind you, tense and ready to pick you up in case you break at a moment's notice. They say nothing else matters."

"Bucky, Winter, you *know* I can take a hit. You know I won't break." Steve tried to sit up and grimaced. "Well, at least I heal faster and need less protecting."

 

"Steve, *I* know, but my body doesn't." Bucky ladled the curry into a bowl and sat down by the bed. "Now let my body remember what it feels to cook with you instead of what it feels like to always worry about you. Let my body create new memories." He balanced the bowl of curry on his knee, then shoved a spoonful of curry up to Steve's face. "Now eat." 

Steve took a bite and felt the warmth spread through him.

**Author's Note:**

> The cool picture was drawn by karaii on tumblr and colored by me! :)
> 
> (Yes, this whole thing started as an art trade.)


End file.
